Queen Silvia of Sweden

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening depending on when you are reading this.  July is done and then August will arrive.  August is when I do my recommendations for the school year.  I will admit that this was nice to get out as many royal documentaries as I possibly could.  It was my treat for not doing as many royal documentaries as I could when I started the blog, laugh out loud. This may be a shorter review in comparison to my others but I will do my best.  Anyway, this documentary I am going to look at is a biography of Queen Silvia of Sweden.  This documentary has a runtime of 45:06 minutes.  This is part of a celebrity-exclusive interview series.

Silvia, Queen of Sweden has ruled alongside her King Carl Gustav of Sweden for decades.  The Swedish Royal Family retains its popularity with Queen Silvia the most popular member of the family.  Even an American Magazine ranks her among the most powerful women in the world.  However, she does not see it that way, in fact, she sees her role as being a helper.  She also sees herself as a champion of children and speaks out on the exploitation of children.

The interview with the word “power” and how Silvia avoids using that word because she feels like she is more of a helper.   The talk shifts to the politics and how she does pay attention to politics but never speaks public about political causes.  She prefers talking about her social interest.  Queen Silvia and the interviewer talk about women’s issues and the issue about immigration.  Queen Silvia has grown up a woman between two worlds having living in both Germany and Brazil.

The interview then shifts to Queen Silvia’s work with children and how she champions children and childhood.  There is a clip of her attending a classroom as well as attending a cultural event.  When she started championing children, it shocked Swedish society.  She started speaking out in 1992 after certain events in Sweden that sent shockwaves throughout Swedish society.  She organized the first conference on the exploitation of children.  She talks about human trafficking as well as child trafficking and how governments are getting on board to prevent it from happening.

She reflects on her half Brazilian and half German heritage and how she hopes that she can unify all her roots together.  She believes she brings a different perspective to her role as Queen and she continues to discover new things about Swedes.  Then she talks about the mentorship program she oversees and talsk about the impact that it has on young girls.

It took a while, but she got to talk about meeting her husband.  They had met at the Munich Olympic Games and she took four years to decide to marry him.  She reflects on that she will do her best to be Queen.  There was a nice little section about the wedding and the engagement.  Then there are clips that show the family and the Nobel Prizes.  To learn more about Queen Silvia, continue to watch the rest of the interview.

This was a very softly volume documentary, so you will have to turn it up.  I had to turn it up when I watched it.  This is very unlike other documentaries I have done because it was interview of a person and not the story of the person.  I was hoping this would have been along the lines of the documentaries that I did on Queen Mathilde, Queen Maxima, and Queen Letizia but I was left disappointed.  It was very slow going and very few clips of Queen Silvia’s actual work.  I would not recommend showing this to a history class nor would I use this for research purposes.